Love Is Beautiful (Chelsea & Max) (5 page)

D
amn it
. I was so excited to get to physical therapy and get to work on my aching knee that I’m here early and have nothing to do but sit in this uncomfortable plastic chair and wait my turn. My run yesterday was everything I needed and everything I didn’t all wrapped up into one. Today, my knee hurts enough that even I am willing to admit that it’s injured. That it needs attention before I can do my job properly. After a solid six miles of running in the rain, I finally outran the memories, so the pain today is worth it. By the time I finished my second shower of the day, I fell into bed and didn’t move until well past sunrise.

The waiting room at Cincinnati Orthopedics is incorporated into their workout area. It’s just one big, open room with lots of machines designed to help put people back together again which, while a little unnerving when you’re getting worked on, makes it perfect for people watching when you’re not. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, studying people when I’m out in a public place. I like to try and figure out as much as I can about them by studying their mannerisms and behavior. It started as something I did subconsciously while I was in the foster system. A survival mechanism. It’s so much easier to avoid a problem if you’ve already pegged someone as a potential threat.

But as I aged out of the system and realized that I’d been doing it and how it had helped me come through some super shitty experiences with only the smallest amount of scarring, I cultivated the habit. Now, I read people quickly. Get a feel for who they are and what they’re thinking. It’s helped me nail more than just a few criminals with nothing more than a traffic violation and a gut feeling.

It doesn’t take too long for my focus to settle on my physical therapist. Her blonde hair is down today, hanging just to her shoulders, and continually hiding her face from view. After a few minutes, I start to think she’s doing it on purpose. A few minutes after that, I know she’s doing it on purpose. My alarm bells are going off like crazy. I know that posture all too well. Arms wrapped around herself. Shoulders slumped. Chest hollowed out.

She’s scared and trying to pretend she’s not. And her eyes only complete the picture. She won’t keep them in one place. Her focus darts around like she’s trying to take in everything all at once. I know what that look means, and, even if she is a nincompoop, I can’t stand seeing anyone look like that.

But then she turns towards me, showing me her whole face for the first time and my heart jumps into my throat. A massive bruise stretches across her cheekbone. There’s a gash on her bottom lip and a wariness showing in her eyes that she doesn’t seem comfortable with at all.

I stand. I can’t help it. Seeing her pretty face all banged up like that taps into years of my own personal baggage. I even take a few steps towards her before I fully realize I’m moving and force myself to stop. Hurt or not, in need or not, this woman is a stranger, one that I wasn’t exactly nice to when we first met. The last thing she needs is me going all over-protective on her ass. Hell, I’m a big man and wear a scowl like a badge of honor. I’m scary in my own right.

Any number of things could have caused those bruises. A car wreck. A fall. An accident at the gym. But my instincts say it’s a man who did that to her. The last thing she needs is me coming at her, regardless of my intention.

She catches my eye and twists her face into one of wry amusement, shrugs her shoulders and her hand moves to cover her face—probably subconsciously. I purse my lips and nod, just once. An affirmation of the bruise, of her embarrassment. A promise not to come stomping over there and interrupt while she’s working with her patient.

I sit on the very edge of my seat and drum my fingers on my injured knee. The cop in me is sizing her up. Sizing up the guy with her. Sizing up everyone in this room. Looking for answers before I even know what questions I’m asking.

All the while I’m fighting the urge to come to her rescue. To find out what happened and take all my years of pent up rage out on whoever did that to her. Because nincompoop or not, I’m certain this woman is a good person, doing her best to make it in the world. I have a million explanations for what happened to her swirling around in her head, each one worse than the one that came before it, all of them spawned by the incredible amount of shit I’ve seen in the world. People are capable of some pretty fucked up things.

It only takes a few sideways glances from some of the people surrounding me to make me realize that I look just like the kind of person capable of those fucked up things. Back straight, jaw set, perched on the edge of my chair while I stare down the pretty physical therapist with the bruised face. My dark features are imposing as it is, I know that and use it to my advantage every chance I get. But now? While I’m being this intense? I’m sure I’m downright scary.

I force myself to sit back in my chair and take a few breaths. Force my attention away from the blonde with the bruised face. Ignore the surge of memories threatening to break through the barrier I reconstructed during my run last night.

This woman is a stranger
, I tell myself over and over.
She hasn’t asked for your help.

Hell, she might not even need my help. Not everyone who is the victim of a crime is an actual victim. She might have everything taken care of. And I might be jumping to conclusions about how she got those bruises. Although, watching her, I doubt I am. Like I said, I know how to read people. And I know that look on her face all too well.

All too well, indeed.

“
G
ood morning
, Mr. Santoro.” The guy has been staring at me since he got here. Those deep lines etched into the space between his eyebrows. I wanted to crumple under the weight of it, but I didn’t, even if I did find it a little rude. This guy is a cop after all. It’s not like he hasn’t seen his fair share of bruised faces in his time.

“Morning.” He smiles at me, polite and reserved. I’m surprised. I expected a barrage of questions after the last fifteen minutes of intense scrutiny.

“That limp seems more pronounced today than it was when you left last week.” If he’s going to pull of professional then damn it, I will, too.

“Observant,” he says in that tight-lipped growl of his. My sarcasm meter is going off like crazy, but his eyes are too soft for sarcasm. “I may have pushed myself too hard yesterday.”

“And just what exactly do you consider pushing yourself too hard?”

“I went for a couple runs.”

There is so much more to this guy than he lets on. I can see it running right underneath his tight-lipped surface. He’s practically vibrating with energy and I know there’s so much he’s not saying. I can see it in those bullet blue eyes.

“A couple runs.” I twist my lips into what I hope is a wry expression of disbelief. “Can you be a little more detailed?” Rather than lead him over to the bikes like I had originally intended, I have him hop up on one of the examination tables so I can get a better look at his knee.

“No need to get all judgmental on me, Ms. London. The first run wasn’t exactly my choice.”

I let out a surprised little laugh. I can’t believe the audacity of this guy! “No judgement. Just stuff I need to know.” I roll up his pant leg, wishing he had worn shorts because unveiling his leg like this feels oddly intimate.

“I pulled a guy over for speeding yesterday and the bastard bolted. I chased him.” He flinches as I probe his swollen knee with my fingers.

“Couldn’t you have called for backup or something?” Something about knowing he had to chase down a bad guy yesterday makes me see him in a different light. He’s not just a cop sitting in his car, waiting for poor women who are late to work to zoom by so he can make his quota for the month. This is a man who chases down criminals on a Monday afternoon.

“I could. But the guy would have gotten away. That’s not exactly doing my job, now is it?” He looks down at me, his eyes intense.

“I guess not.” His knee looks bad enough that I’m not putting him on the bike. I don’t even think I want him doing any exercise at all. I’ll hook him up to the TENS unit and then do some deep tissue massage before I ice him down and send him home. “And the other run? Was that job related, too?”

“No. But it was just as necessary.” The look on his face tells me not to push so I don’t.

“Well, you’ve pushed us backwards a bit here. I don’t want you putting any more strain on the knee today so we’re going to skip all the work on your part and go straight to the work on my part.”

I get him stretched out and comfortable while I attach the self-adhesive pads to key points around the joint. I keep having to fiddle with his pants and am growing ever more uncomfortable with it and I don’t know why. It’s not like I haven’t had to deal with a patient’s inappropriate clothing choices before.

“So the bruises…” he says as I turn on the TENS unit. “Feel like talking about it?”

I tense. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate, Mr. Santoro.”

“Probably not, but I can’t help it. You’ve got my cop senses going crazy.”

“Cop senses, huh?” I can’t look him in the eye and wish I could think of some cute way to tell him I’m okay. Make some sarcastic remark that gets him to drop the subject and let me do my job without getting way too personal with the jerk who gave me a big ass speeding ticket last week.

“It’s a real thing,” he says without even a hint of humor. “And they’re telling me that you could use a little help right about now.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine.” There’s a little part of me that wants to ask him how to go about filing the assault charges. Wants to ask what problems I might run into, accusing a rich athlete with access to powerful lawyers of attempted rape and blaming my bruises on him. What if June doesn’t corroborate the story? What if Hudson chickens out and won’t be my witness? What if the whole world thinks I’m a slut or that I somehow earned what happened to me? But Friday night taught me all I needed to know about mixing business with my personal life. If I need answers to those questions, I’ll wait to ask the officer I file my report with.

Once I’ve got the TENS unit set up properly, I leave him stretched out on the table and busy myself with some paperwork while the machine does his job. The whole time, I find that I can’t keep my eyes off the guy. He’s handsome, in a beastly kind of way. And even though he pegged his concern for me on being a cop, the look in his eyes said it came from some deeper, more personal part of him. Would it really be unprofessional of me to ask this guy what to expect when I go to press charges?

I head his way as the TENS unit finishes its program and unhook the electrodes from around his knee. “How’s that feeling?” I ask, avoiding his eyes.

“That thing is bizarre.”

I giggle a little as he stares at his knee. “It is, isn’t it?”

“It feels a little better now, but I might hate that thing.” He gestures to the machine as I put it away.

“Oh yeah?” I frown, wondering if I had the settings up too high. “It didn’t hurt, did it?” The TENS unit sends little electrical impulses across the surface of the skin and along nerve endings. It should tingle and it definitely causes the muscles in the area to alternately clench and relax as the machine does its job, but not enough to hurt.

Mr. Santoro shakes his head dismissively. “Nah. Not even a little. It tensed my muscles for me. I’m not sure I like how that felt.”

Ahhh. A control freak. Of course. “It can be unnerving to feel your body moving without you telling it to. But, how does it feel now? Better right?”

He straightens his knee, and I stare at the highly defined quadriceps poking out of the edge of his pants. I said it last week, but I mean it even more today. This guy has a body that could rival Hudson’s and that’s saying a lot.

“Yeah. I guess it does.” He smiles at me and, silly me, I like it. “So what now, doc? Now that I’m all better, are you gonna let me loose on the machines?” He gestures towards the exercise equipment behind us.

“First of all, I’m not a doctor. And second of all, you’re not all better. And third of all, I don’t want you doing anything active for at least a week.”

His eyebrows raise. “I can’t promise that.”

“Walking is fine, but pain is your body’s stop sign. If what you’re doing hurts, you need to stop. At least until we’ve got you further along in the healing process.”

He glowers at me, all the friendliness from earlier draining from his face. And I use that term broadly. I’m not sure ‘friendly’ could ever be used to describe Max Santoro. “Fine.”

I nod my head as if that settled everything. “Good.” And then, in a very un-Chelsea-like, spur of the moment way, I speak without thinking. “I was assaulted Friday night.”

Well. So much for professionalism. I can just hear my job going down the toilet.

“What happened?”

I explain, giving him the highlights and avoid naming names, ever so aware that I’m in a huge room surrounded by my colleagues and their patients. “And I guess I really don’t know what to do next.”

“Have you filed a report?”

I shake my head.

His frown deepens. “Did you go to the hospital?”

“Yeah. A friend took me.” I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call Hudson a friend, but I’m not ready to name him.

“Well at least there’s that.” Max studies my face. Catches my gaze and raises his eyebrows and shows me his palm. A warning. And then, ever so gently, he captures my chin between his thumb and forefinger and turns my face to get a better look at my cheek. “Anything else hurt?” His voice is low. Gentle. There’s something heartbreaking about the disquiet in his tone.

“My shoulder was sore for a few days, but it’s better now. The other girl got a lot more of his … err … attention.” I shrug and meet his eyes. Time stops. This guy is looking straight into me and I feel bared to him. Like he can read my mind and see my soul. It’s overwhelming. I look away.

“Has she pressed charges?”

I shake my head, pulling my chin from his grasp. How can I miss the contact and be grateful to break it at the same time? “I don’t think she will. My friend knows her. Said he didn’t think this was her first rodeo.”

Max frowns again, drawing his eyebrows together. “When are you done here?”

“I work until four.”

“Come down to the station afterwards. I’ll meet you there and you can file your report with me.”

I want to tell him no. Or, at least, I feel like I should say no because I don’t know how that would affect our business relationship. But I don’t. I fight back tears of relief, inwardly yelling at myself for being so weak, and agree to meet him at four thirty.